deceived by some
false trick or other.

There are certain notable markets wherein great plenty of horses and
colts is bought and sold, and whereunto such as have need resort
yearly to buy and make their necessary provision of them, as Ripon,
Newport Pond, Wolfpit, Harboro', and divers others. But, as most
drovers are very diligent to bring great store of these unto those
places, so many of them are too too lewd in abusing such as buy them.
For they have a custom, to make them look fair to the eye, when they
come within two days' journey of the market to drive them till they
sweat, and for the space of eight or twelve hours, which, being done,
they turn them all over the backs into some water, where they stand
for a season, and then go forward with them to the place appointed,
where they make sale of their infected ware, and such as by this means
do fall into many diseases and maladies. Of such outlandish horses as
are daily brought over unto us I speak not, as the jennet of Spain,
the courser of Naples, the hobby of Ireland, the Flemish roile and the
Scottish nag, because that further speech of them cometh not within
the compass of this treatise, and for whose breed and maintenance
(especially of the greatest sort) King Henry the Eighth erected a
noble studdery, and for a time had very good success with them, till
the officers, waxing weary, procured a mixed brood of bastard races,
whereby his good purpose came to little effect. Sir Nicholas Arnold of
late hath bred the best horses in England, and written of the manner
of their production: would to God his compass of ground were like to
that of Pella in Syria, wherein the king of that nation had usually a
studdery of 30,000 mares and 300 stallions, as Strabo doth remember,
lib. 16. But to leave this, let us see what may be said of sheep.

Our sheep are very excellent, sith for sweetness of flesh they pass
all other. And so much are our wools to be preferred before those of
Milesia and other places that if Jason had known the value of them
that are bred and to be had in Britain he would never have gone to
Colchis to look for any there. For, as Dionysius Alexandrinus saith in
his _De situ Orbis_, it may by spinning be made comparable to the
spider's web. What fools then are our countrymen, in that they seek to
bereave themselves of this commodity by practising daily how to
transfer the same to other nations, in carrying over their rams and
ewes to breed and increase am